Stephen Hawking Passes Away

[Rockstar]

Considering the thought of some in the fields of quantum theory and nuclear physics even our bodies are more ethereal than real.
The brain may stop working but it doesn't in anyway mean your state of awareness dies with it. Something along the lines of just because you smash the radio reciever (brain) doesn't in anyway affect the radio waves (consciousness).

But alas only Mr. Hawkings know the truth of the matter.

[Skybird]

We have no sign or indication whatever that self-awareness, mind, can exist without a carrier that we usually identify to be a brain, at least some form of neural-like network of sufficient minimum complexity. Anything beyond that is mere speculation, and unfounded claim only.

NDEs (near death experiences, something that was alongside thanatology once a field I somewhat specialised in) also reveal no real indication for any state of mind existing beyond material life, and deal with states close to being dead, being almost dead for longer time, and the subjective quality of the experience of dying - but not being dead for sure, once and forever.

When Siddharta Gautama was asked wheter or not there is a subjective quality in individual mind that exists beyond our death, he clearly said No. Whch did not stop many people from nevertheless mixing up his explanations of Athman and An-Athman and trying to read into this that there is a wandering of the individual "soul" that survives the individuum's death. Still, Buddha beyond doubt and crystal-clearly rejected this idea.

Philosophy. Its no science, its all imaginery escapism to make our lack of control over the basic and profoud uncertainty of our life more bearable (or even the opposite, if nihilism is more up to your taste). We do not like the outlook of us being unimportant in the greater scheme of things, and being helpessly exposed to cosmological powers and developments on which we have not he smallest influence. We are afraid, like little kids learning to swim and thinking they are safe as long as they keep a grab of the swimming basin's rim. But that is no swimming.

Many traditions and cultures had socalled books of the dead, most wellknown are the Egytian Book of Toth, and the Tibetan Bardo Thödol. But these books in principle are books about how to live. You cannot live freely if you all the time are afraid of death. But you cannot overcome fear of death if not mastering the art of living. In the end, both belong together, and in a way are one and the same. Its our sense of individuality only that makes us afraid. And this is what the Buddhist concept of Athman and Anathman is about, too: individual self, and greater non-self.

Or in the words of Hawkings: don't just look all the time to the ground before your feet, but look up to the stars, and wonder. And as somebody once said to me when I was still at school: the span of our lives is the same, no matter whether we spend it laughing or crying.

[Rockstar]

Not even science has an answer if or where consciousness resides within the brain. Until either of us find it neither camp has proof one way or the other of what lies ahead. Buddha and Hawking having as you say no doubt and crystal-clearly rejecting the idea that the mind persists after the death of the body. Has just as much scientific basis as Mr. Quatro's suggestion that it does. Both are philosophical answers to philosophical questions.

What science does know is that specific regions of the brain are well known to be devoted to the processing of speech and vision. The paths of the incoming data have been for the most part identified. The puzzle is in the replay. There is no hint in the brain of how you hear or see what you have heard or seen. There is no sound in your brain. Put a stethoscope anywhere in the brain and all that is heard is the gurgling of the blood as it moves through the vessels. No voices, no music but I hear voices and music. But where is an unknown. The identical biochemical reactions that in one part of the brain store inputs related to the sounds we hear, in another location of the brain record the sights we see. But it is all chemistry and even more perplexing, it's all the same chemistry. And yet from this chemistry emerge the immeasurably different sensations of sound and sight. But where are they? The pat answer is that we perceive these chemical reactions as sound and sight. Obviously that is how we perceive the chemistry. The location of that perception is the puzzle. If consciousness resides within the brain it is very well hidden.

Sharing some thoughts of other scientists

“Everything is Information”. - John Wheeler

"Inherent difficulties of the materialist theory (of existence) have appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the 20th century. This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units of matter such as atoms (of which we and all objects are composed) are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here quantum theory has created a complete change in the situation.... The smallest units of matter are, in fact not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word.; they are, in Plato's sense, ideas." - Werner Heisenberg

"It has occurred to me lately I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities that both questions (the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from nonliving matter) might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late growth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality - the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create science, art, and technology. ... " - George Wald in Life and Mind in the Universe (http://elijahwald.com/lifeandmind.html)

“So in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We, (our personal awareness of being ourselves), are not part of it. We are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture.... And this is our only way of communicating with them. - Erwin Schroedinger

"We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter." - Sir James Jean

Bottom line - physical universe does not physically exist, Except as phantom probability distributions. Only thing that is "real" is consciousness. - Youtube's Dr. Quantum

Now for my 'Budda moment' It has been said "With wisdom Yehovah created the heavens and the earth"(Gen. 1:1). The Torah informs me, and as Wald, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Jeans, Wheeler and Dr. Quantum have come to confirm, that wisdom (skeptics may wish to substitute here the scientifically acceptable term “information" is substrate, the basis, of existence. Mind is as fundamental to our universe as are time and space.

[Eichhörnchen]

My brain hurts

[Buddahaid]

Then get out of your chair.....

[Rockstar]

Though as I said earlier only Hawking, Heisenberg, Wald, Jeans, Wheeler and for that matter Budda since all having died or as others say made the transition know the truth. We amongst the physical still struggle to live and learn. Until our time comes I suggest we live life to its fullest be good to and love one another. In my opinion its not what we believe (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddism, Judaism, Islam etc. etc.) that matters but how we relate to this world and most especially the concern we express for our fellow humans who I also believe are all made in the image of God, vastly affects the quality of the part of our being that persists after the death of our bodies. Life becomes an episode in a saga of our making, a chronicle that reaches into our pasts and extends to our yet unformed futures. Life's experiences, joyful or tragic, form but a part of this far more grand continuum.

Nothing like a little psilocybin to loosen up your thalamus.

Oh look a MONKEY!

[Skybird]

The fact that if you destroy your brain there is no more sign left of your mind, and no life also (that is beyond pure reflexes), settles the issue convincingly enough for me. No life - no mind. No brain, no mind. Even the emotions we know are formed in the brain (not in the heart, though their sensation can organically feed back on heart activity).

Or in other words: from lifeless matter to living matter. From living matter to mind.

Again, this is in consistence with observation. We have not a single observation where this sequence is different.

And science has very well a consensus here. It just collides head on with religious beliefs of an afterlife. The burden of evidence here is on religion. However: its relgion's claim - so it is its burden to prove its claim.

What Rockstar refers to, may differ form the term "mind" by him meaning what usually is called "soul". But this "souöl" is untl today just hear-say, a myth, nobody has seen it, nobody has located it, and nobody has proven its existence. Same is true for a "super-individual soul": a "devine spark" that shall add meaning to all things existing. But man is the onlky life form on this planet paying attention to this concept which he has created all by himself, so it most probbaly is not a cosmological issue but a human issue. The ideas ond conceots of deities and demons are inbside our brain, and both deities and demons die the moment the brain thinking of them dies.

This is why in Buddhism it is pointed out to be so important to not think about these things and trying to catch them in terms and labels - you cannot. In Judaism, the name of Jahwe is considered to be unpronouncable.

In this wonderful movie "The life of Pi", the protagonist narrating the story probably has chosen a very wise decision. He does not deny that his narration about his adventure and the tiger is ficitopnal, and that he added plenty of imagination to the element of real fact there is in his biography. But he is perfectly aware that this does not turn his fiction into a true, real fact. It only is his way to approach life in a way that he finds more beautiful when thinking of it in the terms and symbols of the story he told, it is his way to add meaning to his life and to fully enjoy it - more so than if he would just stick to the bare facts, which are much more sober. Its his way to adapt to life and the fact that he exists without having any control about life, being vulnerably exposed to it. - I think this is psycholgically healthy and maybe even necessary for most people, it is the real function of cults and religion, and even an important onem, because most people have not what it takes to face the grim facts about cosmology and the lack of relevanc eof their own existence in it. Believing in a self-invented fantasy instead stabilises the psyche's balance and gives peace of mind. And as long as it does not lead to either escapism or imperial missionising, there is little I would argue against this. Its not the only thing where nature uses tricks to make us do what from abiologistical point of view is our job to do. Just think of the relevance we attribute to the concept of love although from evolutuion'S/nature'S point of view it is unneeded for procreating. Love is nature's trick to make us making babies. The trick works. And the illusion mostly is sweet and satisfying, isn't it?

Lower animals and lower life forms do not make use such "tricks". Maybe there is a link, a correlation: the mor eocmplex a mind and brain forming it is, the more it asks questions, and the more such concepts - like emotions - are needed to keep the mind in balance and at opeace with the universe that it experiences as uncontrollable, danegrous and chaotic. Where your mind is not developed enough to realise the univers ebeyond your direct biological needs and instincts, your minds cannot get unsettled, for you then you lack the necessary preconditions for getting unsettled: an asking mind. Thats why we see emotions in dogs, apes, whales - but not in amebas, worms, gras, leaves of a tree, corals.

Life of Pi. Wonderful movie, if you do not know it, go watch it, I absolutely recommend it.

[Rockstar]

Excellent movie I've watched several times and have never grown tired of it.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Eichhörnchen

My brain hurts

How can something hurt, that does not exist .. uh oh sry.
This, at the same time, settles the question whether i believe that perception and thinking can exist without a brain. It cannnot.

What is about to remain if we die.. the "information" of the atoms and molecules that once made out a person, can theoretically be back-calculated, but this does not mean that said former person is still aware, can 'think', or perceive anything. Those are entirely different things.
Whether there is a "soul", that "survives" (the very term "surviving" is completely wrong here).. metaphysical Quatsch.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Catfish

What is about to remain if we die.. the "information" of the atoms and molecules that once made out a person, can theoretically be back-calculated,

Atoms go in and out our body all the time. Roughly every six years the last remaining atom of the last replacement cycle has left the body and has been replaced by another one. The body then, from an atomic point of view, is "new". Its like repairing a car while it is driving, and replacing all its parts while being in travel. Still, the driving, the destination remain the same, so does the ever shrinking amount of fuel in the tank.

[Rockstar]

From the peer reviewed medical journal The Lancet'

"How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG? . . . Furthermore, blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this experience. NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation. There is a theory that consciousness can be experienced independently from the normal body-linked waking consciousness. The current concept in medical science, however, states that consciousness is the product of the brain.

The possibility of consciousness existing outside of the brain, when the brain itself appears to be dead, is for Dr. van Lommel an especially important outcome of this research. As he wrote at the end of The Lancet article, and then added in a letter to Dr. Long:
How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG? . . . Furthermore, blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this experience. NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation. There is a theory that consciousness can be experienced independently from the normal body-linked waking consciousness. The current concept in medical science, however, states that consciousness is the product of the brain. Could the brain be a kind of receiver for consciousness and memories, functioning like a TV, radio or a mobile telephone? What you receive is not generated by the receiver, but rather electromagnetic informational waves (photons) that are always around you and are made visible or audible to you by the brain and your sense organs. In our prospective study of patients that were clinically dead (flat EEG, showing no electrical activity in the cortex, and loss of brain stem function evidenced by fixed dilated pupils and absence of the gag reflex), the patients report a clear consciousness, in which cognitive functioning, emotion, sense of identity, or memory from early childhood occurred, as well as perceptions from a position out and above their "dead" body.
To answer these fundamental questions, research should be focused on specific elements of the NDE, such as out-of-body experiences and other verifiable aspects. Finally, the theory and background of transcendence should be included as a part of an explanatory framework for these experiences.


Such emphasis on transcendent experience is not welcomed by all medical professionals. The Lancet editors included a "Commentary" on Dr. van Lommel's article, which argued that even when patients accurately report events that occur while their brain and heart are not functioning, the cause might not be a true separation of their consciousness from their bodies but rather "prior knowledge, fantasy or dreams, lucky guesses, ...details learned between the NDE and giving an account of it, and...false memories" the mind trying to retrospectively "fill in the gap" after a period of cortical inactivity.

The Commentary's author, British psychology professor Christopher French, explained further why he finds it hard to believe these patients' reports of their NDEs. He pointed to the fact that two persons who'd originally told van Lommel's team of no memory that would be categorized as an NDE, later told them in the two-year follow-up interview of experiences in the hospital that the researchers would categorize as core NDEs. Professor French's conclusion was that, "It seems likely that at least some patients, on hearing about other survivors' NDEs, would start to imagine what it would have been like if they had had the same experience.... Recent psychological studies have shown conclusively that simply imagining that one has had experiences that had in fact never been encountered will lead to the development of false memories for those experiences.

But psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Greyson, a member of The Lancet's peer review team and a long-time NDE researcher, offered Vital Signs a different explanation. "In my own research with patients hospitalized for attempted suicide, ...there were a few ...who, on follow-up visits, later described NDEs in the course of their initial suicide attempt. They all told me that they simply hadn't trusted me sufficiently in our initial interview to share the NDE. This should not be surprising, because many of them were concerned about being regarded as crazy... There is quite a lot of evidence that NDErs often are unwilling to share their accounts with researchers until they have earned their trust. Unless we have some reason to suspect that NDErs are highly suggestible and have some strong motivation to imagine having had their NDEs, it seems irrational to assume that all NDEs are 'false memories'.""


Like any good scientist will tell ya its about possibilities. Nothing should be written off as bunk until it can be proven one way or the other.

[Skybird]

There is no contradiction to what I said, Rocstar.

Eys do not really "see". Its the brain that interprets the incoming impulses from the optical nerve that starts to fire bioelectrical pulses when photons hit the retina. But we do not see the ohotons themselves, nor do we see the thing we beleive is there. It is an interpretation of our - brain. In other words, we do not perceive things, the world, "as it is". We interpret it. Or in other words: we do not find rality, but we invent it - by the functional ways in which our perception ogans work. For some animal that has other senses as its dominant senses than we with our eyes, the world is something very different than for us. Even a blind person does not really share the same reality with a seeing person. Its all about the ability of the brain, and the senes it is equipped with for data input. And like a relais reacts to changing states but still is not already a full-blown CPU, a neural reflex-system reactng automaztically to a stimulus is not already a brain, and a mind. Thats why I have so big problems to indeed see the real "intelligence" in our so far achieved artificial intelligence projects. The quality I miss is "self-awareness".

You can create visual perceptions by stimulating certain brain areas - and completely bypassing the eyes. One year ago, maybe you remember, I wrote about this strange low frequency sound I am hearing, this mysterious "Hum". I referred to data from the early sixties already where it was shown that people who were deaf since birth and had no operational accustic nerves, could be made to perceive (to "hear") chaotic, crankling sounds by expsing a certain frontal part of the brain to low-energetic electromagntic radiation. If you cover this brain segment by an obstacle the electromagnetism could not penetrate, their perception ended.

On NDEs, the problem ther eis that nobody who really and indeed was dead by all implicit meaning of this term, has ever cokme back- NDEs are about "almost dead", not penultmately dead. The chnages of the death criterion in medicine to allow easier, earlier organ extraction for transplantation, do not make it easier, but add to the confusion here (organ transplanatairons from truly dead bodies are not possible, they need to be extracted from body at a time when the organsim is "almost dead" or "as good as dead" . But death, by all what we can say about it, the real ultimate death, is irreversible.

Personally, I have no worries about a nothingness that I turn into when I am dead. A state where this quality I refer to as "me" no more exists. This state excludes any reasons for being excited or worried, since it is nothing at all. What I am worried abut, like many lifeforms are, is my dying, is physical pain, is fear. Many people who had NDEs said they have lost their fear of death, no matter the specific individual explanation and wording of theirs, but what they really mean by this is: they have lost their fear of the dying process.

If there is somethign beyond death, we do not know, and you and me probably mjst agree that we disagree on this issue. I will always say that I do not expect there to be anythign beyond and that this also does not worry me - and that I refuse to mix up the knoweldge colelcted and verified by science so far, with mythological claims about an afterlife. Just claiming that there is something beyond death, is not already a scientifc theory on same qualitative eye level with other scinetiifc theories, if that would be so, the one coudl also claim that the descriptions of th Lord of the Rings may describe a reality that is for real somewhere in the universe, a claim based on th argment then that nobdy can prove the opposite. Its an implication of logics that the non-existence of something simply can never be proven. becasue it does, per definitionem, not exist.

If people take comfort from painting a broader image about their life and its role in the universe and about the ending of life, then I have nothign against that. But i am a man of cold hearted sober scientific methodology , I do not think in absolute certainties, for no reaosnable scirntist would dare to do that: I think in likelihoods and probabilities for somethign to be real or not, and where I must object is if pure speculation already is beign treated as or beign demanded to be given the status of a "theory" worth the ranks needed to enter scientific dispute. But Tolkien's Silmarillion is not the Scientific American in book format. I fll recongise the probaly needed and important role of belief to provode psychological balance and greater comfort while living in a chaotic, uncertain universe that all the time threatens to wipe out our fragile existence and that provides us wit no certain safeties or control over our life's fate, only few people can stare into the abyss and holding out while the abyss starts to stare back into them. And thats why I appreciate The poetry in Life of Pi so much. I can udnerstand the need for it, for it is human.

But lets not mistake apples for oranges. This is this, and that is that. A science that accepts the - unproven and probably unprovable - premises made by religion, is no science anymore, but itself has become religion, too, enforcing pre-filtering of thoughts and conclusions and interpretations that form hypothesis and later theories that all then have already been corrupted as well, and have already determined what findings may be seen as true, and what gets ignored under the claim "that it cannot be, since it is heresy to assume it could be". That is no longer science.

Unfortunately a huge part of the achademic circus today is corrupted, though not just for relgious reasons, but for reasons of relgion-surrogate ideologies. Many scientists accept to work for just trxying toprove what for economical and ideolgoical reaosns should be shown as "proven facts". This cna nly be revealed by some basic and profound understanding of statistics and methodology, to assess the quaity of the emircal analysis such results base upon. And most journalists, politicians and ideological crusaders, no matter their aims and goals, lack these skills. The result is an overall confusion that we can see where ever we look. Fake science, so to speak.

[fumo30]

"Can An Organ Transplant Change A Recipient's Personality? Cell Memory Theory Affirms 'Yes'"



http://www.medicaldaily.com/can-orga...rms-yes-247498

[Skybird]

Cell Memory Theory. I heard of that before. A highly speculative theory at best, to me it is on the level that makes primives believe that if they eat the meat of a slain enemy they gain his physical power. Or if you eat a phallic vegetable, you gain sexual potence. Or that homeopathy actually causally works, or that crystals laid into water load it with "information" that heals.

AFAIK, the empirical research done, and its findings, are sporadic at best, and not convincing.

[Buddahaid]

More food for thought.

Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

Robert A. Heinlein

I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith-it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.

Robert A. Heinlein